


A Great Dark Wing within the Wings of a Storm

by theoldgods



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Book 5: A Dance with Dragons, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Cunnilingus, Dream Sex, Dreams and Nightmares, F/F, F/M, Masturbation, Missing Scene, Oral Sex, Prophetic Dreams, Prophetic Visions, R'hllor - Freeform, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Religious Sex, Ritual Sex, The Lord of Light, The Night's Watch, Unreliable Narrator, Vaginal Fingering, Warging, Wargs, direwolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-11
Updated: 2015-07-11
Packaged: 2018-04-06 17:06:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4229928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theoldgods/pseuds/theoldgods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dreams were the whispers of the Great Other, who would drag them all down into eternal night. Dreams were the price one paid to sleep, the toll exacted for mortal weakness, death whispering at your door.</p><p>Melisandre of Asshai knew this, knew that the line between visions and dreams could be capricious at best, just as she knew that Stannis Baratheon was Azor Ahai reborn, that his wife Selyse was her most whole-hearted follower, and that Jon Snow was the warg Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, needed by R'hllor to help fight the Other's demons beyond the Wall.</p><p>Melisandre did not know what R'hllor or the Great Other meant by sending her <i>these</i> dreams, dreams in which the only things that mattered were Jon Snow's wolf and Jon Snow's fingers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Great Dark Wing within the Wings of a Storm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [originally](https://archiveofourown.org/users/originally/gifts).



> This is the back half of the Wall storyline in ADWD and its immediate aftermath, told from Melisandre's perspective. Spoilers for ADWD/GoT season 5 abound, as well as speculation as to how various plot points are resolved. This is based in bookverse, pulling from the show only for bits of speculation as to a certain minor character's fate (which is alluded to but not shown here).
> 
> The title is from Fleetwood Mac's lush, vaguely creepy ["Sara"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzKh9q7vvHY): "And he was just like a great dark wing within the wings of a storm/I think I had met my match..."

R’hllor dragged Melisandre into dreams more frequently than she would have liked in the weeks following Snow’s three dead crows. On this night she had fallen asleep in the midst of fire reading, the first time that had happened since she was Melony, the usual blood on her thighs transformed into fingers grasping inside her, human fingers nonetheless bitterly cold, even in dreams.

Stannis had never taken her that way—Stannis had never taken her any way that wasn’t a brusque, desperate attempt to create a shadow demon, during which attempts he had been nearly drunk with magic anyway, his mind far away from his frenetically pivoting hips. He needed her emotionally in a dull way that paralleled how he needed Seaworth but with far less trust and warmth involved, and that was all to the good. Azor Ahai need not be a kind and trusting soul; what he needed was strength, determination, and the touch of the Lord.

So what was that, that scrabbling deep inside her, touching off sparks of heat in her lower body? Melisandre pondered the question as Devan put her meager breakfast offerings before her. She might not have taken it seriously at all were it not for the fact that it had happened while fire reading, that even now she could not tell the difference between the usual curtains of snow and the cold fingers breaching her, touching off both fear and a dreamlike ecstasy she had not felt in decades.

 _It does not matter_ , Melisandre told herself as she picked at the meal for appearance’s sake. She had also seen Selyse and her entourage in the flames, before she had fallen into dreams, and _that_ Lord Snow would want to know, so as to prepare.

Snow took the news well enough, though not without a wry face at the thought of fifty-odd retainers, a queen, a princess, and a mad creature taking up more of their space and food. “If you are right, my lady, I am glad to know as soon as may be.”

Melisandre glanced sidelong at his inscrutable grey eyes. The wolf stood alongside him as ever, purposefully not meeting her gaze. Since the time she had enchanted him—briefly, but still, a necessary action so as to attempt to understand what this demon was doing again and again in her flames—Ghost had been both drawn to and hateful of her. She had seen Jon Snow’s face react to the spell, the confusion at the estrangement he had probably felt from his demon. He had been so dazed in general, so desperate despite himself at her promises of his sister, that spelling his wolf had been easy.

 _Not that it did much good_ , Melisandre reminded herself as she and Snow parted, Ghost turning his head back once to glare at her feet. All she had felt when she had touched Ghost was Jon Snow himself, brimming with anger and despair, a surge that had lingered in the back of her mind ever since. _A warg for a Lord Commander, as the men all whisper; mayhaps to be expected from these violent northmen grown to manhood in the shadow of the Great Other._

That night, drowsing in her chair, she dreamed of the fingers again. Melisandre _knew_ she was dreaming even as it happened, but her mind was humming, full of Jon Snow’s despair in full force, and her cunt was damp to the touch. She lifted her hips and let the fingers in, brushing her own up against herself to provide warmth alongside the frost.

A voice gasped in her head, soft grunting alongside the push and pull of fingers both real and dreamlike. In her mind’s eye she saw dark curls bobbing between her legs and felt an icy tongue brush her cunt, sending a shiver of ecstasy up her spine and to her heart, which began to freeze as tongue and fingers worked themselves into her.

 _R'hllor_ , she murmured, whether in dream or reality she could not be sure, _R’hllor, please, Lord, save me from this cold._

He did, of course, sending fire blazing down her arms and through her fingers as she ground them desperately against herself until her head exploded, a groan torn from her throat. As she struggled to wakefulness she put a hand over her mouth to muffle her gasping and panting, slowly easing her eyes open.

A shadow with Jon Snow’s face, grey and ruined, its chest dripping blood, knelt on the floor before her, its chin shining with her juices.

A scream lurched in the back of her throat, nearly escaping her. By the time she brought her racing heartbeat under control, the shadow was gone; only she remained, coated in sweat, leaning half out of her chair.

Melisandre brushed the hair from her eyes and sank to her knees in front of the fire. “For the night is dark and full of terrors,” she whispered to it, willing her mind blank. “My Lord, oh, my Lord.”

* * *

She knew the moment Selyse arrived; it would be impossible not to, what with the sudden uptick of noise around the castle. Power and its trappings, however, dictated that she remain seated near her fire, waiting for the queen to come and offer herself up.

By the time Selyse appeared in her rooms, Melisandre had cleaned herself and set out the remnants of a meal—bread and cooling soup, nothing at all fit for a queen. Selyse did not even frown at it, showed no sign of the raised eyebrow Melisandre would have expected on Dragonstone, another lifetime ago now. She ate in neat, quiet bites while Melisandre sat in her chair and pretended to watch the fire.

“Leave the plates for Devan,” Melisandre murmured without turning away, once the sounds of eating had stopped.

“My lord husband did not take the Seaworth boy with him?”

“I asked for him to remain.”

Selyse snorted. “He is so good a manservant to you, my lady?”

Selyse Baratheon would not want to hear of Melisandre’s mercy toward Davos Seaworth, she knew, would not think to care about the smuggler at all.

“A very good one indeed.”

She turned to find Selyse standing a few feet away, looking at her with undisguised yearning. Of all her various attendants, Selyse was the most whole-hearted, the most honest in her need for Melisandre, certainly more honest than any man who stared at her breasts for a beat too long before meeting—and understanding, and cringing from—the fires that were her eyes.

That fire did not stop Selyse from glancing under hooded eyelids as Melisandre undid her dress, stood carelessly naked before the fire. “Come, Your Grace; we will gaze first. It has been a long day, and there is much I think you might sense in the flames.”

Selyse was no priestess; she could barely distinguish one shape from another, and the days when she would see anything of substance in the flames were thin and far between. She was desperate to know anything she might, however, to feel R’hllor touch her even if only for a moment, and so she stripped clumsily as Melisandre took a seat and parted her legs just enough to feel the heat from the flames touch her cunt. By the time Selyse had mimicked her, sweat was beginning to fall between Melisandre’s breasts, leaving trails of salt down her taut belly.

There was nothing taut about Selyse, who did not have the advantage of magic to protect her appearance. The queen’s skin was dry yet loose over her bones, the hair between her legs wild and wiry in comparison to the softer red between Melisandre’s. Her eyes were feverish nonetheless, alternately scanning the flames and Melisandre’s face as she waited for further instruction.

“I want you to seek for Stannis, Your Grace,” Melisandre murmured in her lowest, deepest tone of voice. She felt Selyse shiver as the words sank into her ears. Despite Melisandre’s best attempts, Azor Ahai remained shaded from her each time she looked, lost in a whirl of snow; mayhaps his bride by the laws of men might get insight. “Call for him.”

She took Selyse’s hands in hers as the queen looked into the flames. “Stannis,” she whispered in a hoarse voice. “My lord husband. My Lord R’hllor, please show me him, just a glimpse.”

The reading went on for nearly an hour in total, Melisandre flowing in and out of her own seeing as Selyse called for Stannis. Blood scalded Melisandre’s thighs as she saw flickers of snow, the chained wolf, skulls, the grey girl lying in the snow outside Castle Black as crows swarmed her.

 _Tonight?_ Melisandre asked the flames silently. _Is the girl tonight, Lord?_

There was no response, just a ghostly flicker of Jon Snow’s face and that of his demon wolf, blending in and out of one another in front of a curtain of snow as men screamed and an animal of some sort roared.

When she eventually came to herself it was to find Selyse asleep on the floor alongside her, her own thighs unblemished by heat or blood. If the Lord had not entered her, Melisandre doubted that Selyse could have seen much, but she roused the woman anyway, drawing her fingertips down Selyse’s chest.

“My lady,” Selyse murmured as she opened her eyes. “I saw my lord husband’s face in the snow, lots of snow.”

“Anything more?” Melisandre asked, tracing the edge of Selyse’s breast.

Selyse shivered and stretched. “No, my lady Melisandre.”

“His face is good.” Melisandre tweaked a nipple and smiled at the spasm that went through the body beneath her. “It means he is alive.”

“Of course he is, my lady.”

It was a question, almost, rather than a statement. Melisandre wished she could explain the yawning at the edge of her mind, the shadow that had knelt between her legs and eaten her cunt with Jon Snow’s ruined face. She still saw glimpses of that shadow from time to time in even the broadest daylight. Selyse Baratheon was not made to receive confessions, however, and so Melisandre bent her mouth to her cunt instead of replying.

The first time she had tasted Azor Ahai’s wife, she had felt as strong as when R’hllor entered her during fire gazing, her entire body electric with the touch of wiry hair and the taste of a woman's power. Indeed, it had been Selyse’s willingness to submit to her that had convinced Melisandre that she had found Azor Ahai, had read her flames truly, had found a way into the heart of this stony man’s court. That had been many moons ago, however, and now what Melisandre tasted was mostly the sourness of an oncoming winter, a dry desperation that tasted bitter on her tongue.

Selyse was as vocal as ever, blocking the loudest of her moans with an arm flung across her face. Her legs wound themselves lightly around Melisandre’s back, and Melisandre took that as a sign that R’hllor was holding her to this, binding her to this woman to take what energy she could from her writhing body. The juices were slower than normal in coming, but as they finally brushed her lips she felt it, a shock of life along the base of her own spine, a transfer of lust and life from Selyse’s cunt to hers. Melisandre put one hand on her own mound and began to rub as she flicked her tongue more tightly into Selyse.

It took many minutes for Selyse to come in full, shuddering and murmuring Melisandre’s name through her panting. When she had her breath back, she reached down for Melisandre, who shook her head and crawled toward the fire. With her breasts pressed flat against the floor and her eyes locked on the flames, Melisandre felt like she was submitting at last to R’hllor, offering herself and Selyse to him, and she rubbed at herself more insistently, hips arching off the floor.

“R’hllor, my Lord,” she murmured, feeling tears pricking the corners of her eyes. “We offer ourselves to you; we offer our energies to you. Your servant Selyse has given herself to me to fuel me, to fuel _you_ through me.”

“My Lord,” Selyse echoed. “My Lord, take my offering.”

Melisandre brought herself to a slippery climax, breasts sweat-slick against the floor, nipples aching with the friction. As she felt the jolt run through her cunt and legs, she saw it, a picture flickering briefly against the flames: Jon Snow’s wolf, racing through a dark courtyard, mouth open in a snarl as its red eyes blazed.

* * *

 It took weeks to sort out the issues with Alys Karstark and the wildling she was to marry, all the while trying to keep Jon Snow near to R’hllor. That a mortal could err was something Melisandre had had burned into her from the first day she had been sold to the Red Temple, but like Stannis Baratheon, Snow did not care about the details, only the results. His view was necessarily narrow due to the duties of his position, the constant wrangling and jockeying for position that occurred amongst crows.

Yet Melisandre felt vindicated of sorts when Jon Snow came to a meeting with Selyse and her retainers and asserted the need to rescue the wildlings lost beyond the Wall at the place they called Hardhome. The wildlings she cared not much for, of course; the sorrow of their doomed people was enough to have on the heart, and she could not but feel that there was nothing to be gained from rescuing them, even if such a thing could be done, even if the flames did not show her everything in complete ruin. But that Snow thought of the wider consequences, that he cared what might happen should the Great Other get his hands on them—that was a thing to celebrate.

Selyse was not loved by R’hllor for her foresight; her skills were in sheer dogged belief and a determination to uphold what the Lord thought was right. Her dismissal of the wildlings was thus unsurprising, as was her introduction of Gerrick Kingsblood and her determination to make matches for the Lord, to bond wildling to nobleman. Melisandre had given her approval when Selyse had asked about the marriages, knowing that anything that kept other followers of the Lord happy might be good, though she had refused the woman’s advances afterward. What burned on Melisandre’s mind, what had remained more strongly than ever after Alys Karstark, was Jon Snow’s direwolf and the despair and confusion it had put in her since the day she had enchanted man and beast both.

Snow shrugged her off outside the meeting room, speaking of duties in a way that put Stannis Baratheon’s hard face at the forefront of Melisandre’s mind. She had to shake herself several times to fight off Stannis’s image and pursue the conversation, not that he had a moment’s patience for her during it.

Nonbelievers never believed until it was too late; Melisandre knew that, worked with it as with any other fact R’hllor gave her. It stung her nonetheless, stupidly, to hear Jon Snow’s vitriol: “It seems to me that you make nothing _but_ mistakes, my lady. Where is Stannis? What of Rattleshirt and his spearwives? _Where is my sister_?”

 _You have no nuance, Lord Snow._  Melisandre pushed away another unwanted flash of the shadow between her legs bearing his face. _You have no ability to wait, no patience, no sense of the caprice of R’hllor’s flames_. Out loud she merely promised him answers, should he wait, should he come to her once winter fell in earnest. He left her with only a spiteful response.

Under her skin, every nerve was aflame. That morning she had glimpsed ravens in the sky, news swirling around them all. If Jon Snow would not listen to her now, she would go and prepare for that raven, for whatever it might bring.

Her chamber was desperately cold despite the fire; though it did not harm her, did not touch her skin directly, Melisandre’s awareness of how any other mortal might perceive it, as a weakness of R’hllor’s power in her own domain, made her heart ache. She had not felt this need for R’hllor, this crack in herself, in innumerable years. “My Lord,” she whispered, getting to her knees before the hearth. “My Lord, show me, give me a glimpse of what is to come in this storm.”

There was nothing for a long while. She could not calm her mind; she could not bring any sense of grace or skill to her eyes; all she could see was flame, fierce flame burning in her own head and making her temples ache. And then, as her heart rate increased, as her breath grew frantic with poorly subdued fear and nerves—as she bared herself truly to R’hllor—it came: Jon Snow’s body, grey and shadowy, dripping blood from knife wounds, the mute demon wolf at his heels snarling, audibly snarling in Jon Snow’s voice.

Melisandre would have looked away from the wolf’s vicious red eyes and the knives sprouting along Snow’s spine, but she could not feel any part of her body. She was aware both of her external surroundings and of Snow and his wolf in the fire before her, caught between the worlds of seeing and not seeing, and yet unable to move in either direction as the shadow reached for her and put its icy fingers against her cunt.

 _My lord!_ No sound emerged from her throat. _R’hllor!_ she called again silently as the shadow put its lips, covered with dried blood, directly on her and an electric shock ran from her cunt to her nipples. _R’hllor, what is your meaning?_

There was no answer as she was sucked by the ghost of Jon Snow; he ate with impunity, licking at her mound as she sobbed tears of confusion and ecstasy that evaporated almost at once from her blazing face. The longer he was between her legs the more she felt the cold of the chamber, creeping along the back of her neck, worming its way toward her heart—and the brighter the shadow grew, glowing against the flames behind it. She was under a castle in the Stormlands with the Onion Lord again; she was thrashing beneath Stannis Baratheon in a tent as she pulled his life force from him; she was birthing shadows, hundreds of them, and still Jon Snow ate, and ate, and ate, his fingers on her inner thighs turning from ice to fire as her own heart froze in her chest, her head exploded in a wave of heat, and the world around her went black.

When she came to consciousness again, it was dark outside. Her body was unmarked, she noted dimly, running her fingers across her thighs and cunt, but her head and heart were awash in pain, a prickly, numbing sensation that made her, for the first time since she had committed herself to R’hllor, feel sick in her stomach. Rather than think anything through too closely, she got to her feet and headed in search of Jon Snow.

The castle was curiously quiet except for a distant rumbling from one of the long-abandoned halls. Melisandre’s heart thudded in her chest; she followed the light emanating from the open door and found herself in a gathering of hundreds of crows and wildlings, all staring up at Jon Snow, who stood with a piece of parchment in hand. Melisandre took a position at the back of the hall, watching his eyes twitch in her direction as he explained to the great wildling boar warg that he would be riding—not to Hardhome but south.

 _South?_ Melisandre wondered. And then Jon Snow began to read.

In truth she heard almost nothing of the letter. Phrases from it drifted into her ears—“Your false king is dead...Tell his red whore...I want his daughter and his red witch”—and out again. Danger to herself, unseen in the flames in her preoccupation with Jon Snow’s shadow. Danger to Azor Ahai, Stannis Baratheon, now reported dead by one of the demons in human skin he had set out after.

 _Your false king is dead_ , Ramsay Bolton whispered in her ear, echoes going up and down her spine as the hall around her erupted in screams, shouts, blowing horns. At the head of the hall Jon Snow called to avenge Stannis Baratheon, to hunt down the Bastard of Bolton once and forevermore, and the men were _agreeing_ in huge swaths, roaring for blood.

Everything was wrong. Melisandre was shivering all over now, cold except for a persistent burn beginning at her cunt and radiating upward in waves. She did not know what of this letter was true and what was false, but she knew even less what Jon Snow thought he was doing leaving the front of the war and heading south.

A raven in a storm, and all the world ending around her, and yet no touch from R’hllor except for how her lower body ached and burned, almost as if to make a shadow all over again, but with no one to partner her.

And then she saw several of Jon Snow’s crows slipping out of the hall, light glinting on a drawn dagger, and it came to her all at once.

Outside was frigid. That she knew intellectually, and that she _felt_ , even more acutely than inside, as she wandered the yards in search of Jon Snow’s missing wolf. Outside was also a storm on several fronts, both in the snow threatening to bury them all as it fell and in a sudden eruption of chaos from one of the towers, where an animal roared.

_Jon Snow turning into his direwolf and back again, against a curtain of snow, as men and an animal screamed—_

She ran, faster than her feet had moved in ages. All around the tower was chaos, men screaming, and the animal—the giant—smashing Patrek of King’s Mountain against everything in sight, pulling his limbs from his body and showering the snow beneath with blood. Jon Snow was there, or at least his voice was, calling for a line, for order, and then men were around him.

“Daggers in the dark,” Melisandre whispered as the first knife glanced against his neck and he reached for his own sword to fend them off. But _where_ was the wolf?

 _You should never have been without your demon, Jon Snow,_ she told him silently, turning away from the scene. _You should never have gone without your wolf, you should never have let him leave you, you should never have thrown part of yourself away for these crows who know nothing of the war to come._ She hoped she could find him in time.

Everyone was rushing toward the scene, yet no one paid her any mind as she ran away from it now, toward Jon Snow’s rooms. Fortunately the demon wolf met her halfway, snarling silently, racing directly at her.

“Jon Snow!” Her voice was a whisper, nothing more, but the wolf slowed somewhat before bowling her over. “Jon Snow,” she murmured again, her breath coming short and painful in her chest as the snow began to melt underneath her, the wolf’s momentum carrying it past her and into a snowbank.

The wolf scrambled to its feet and turned back toward her, teeth bared. Its movements were purposeful, and for the first time since her enchantment, it met her eyes with its own, red flashing in the darkness around them.

“Come on, Jon Snow,” she whispered as those eyes bored into her. “Come.”

It balanced, preparing to pounce once more—and then arched, rearing suddenly onto its back legs, front paws scraping the sky, exhaling a long breath that steamed in the night sky. Melisandre's cunt throbbed as the wolf remained stationary for several heartbeats before falling back down onto all four paws and meeting her gaze once more. Its eyes were red, then grey, then red again, and as she watched, it howled, a thin sound that grew in volume until the nearest people turned toward the sound.

“Jon Snow.” Her mouth twisted in a smile at the sight and, at last, sound of Ghost. The warg padded toward her, took one of her hands in its— _his_ —mouth, and then released it, letting it fall back into the puddle of melting snow beneath her. “Good man, Lord Snow.”

He was off again almost before she could blink, racing toward the Wall, scattering people in his wake. She could do nothing but drag herself to her feet and watch as the man-wolf headed for the gate—left unmanned in the chaos, she realized, shivering.

The howls grew dimmer as he disappeared beyond her sightline. She headed instead for the foot of the tower, where Jon Snow’s human body lay in a pool of blood, dangerously close to where the giant was rampaging. The perpetrators had already fled; she dragged the body into a lee behind the tower and got to her knees, bending over him, staring into his wide-open eyes, milky white and rolled back into his skull. Beneath her hands his throat was empty of any pulse.

Melisandre knew that she _could_ , if not exactly _how_. Whatever R’hllor had put in her in the last fire gazing, whatever life he had simultaneously drained from her and given to her, it was burning in her throat, the taste of heat beginning to burble on her lips. She had never given the Lord’s Kiss to one who was truly dead, nor one who was in fact inhabiting a wolf, but it must be possible, or else why did she feel this way, why had she dreamed of Jon Snow’s shadowed self eating her?

She brushed drying blood from his lips—and stared at it on her own fingers as she realized what was missing.

“My lady Melisandre! My lady!”

Selyse’s calls echoed particularly loudly amongst the chaos all around. As she came into view, tripping on the edges of her furs, her hair whipping behind her, a vision of her spread before Melisandre’s hearth came to mind, blood trickling from her cunt.

“What has happened, my lady?” Selyse’s eyes bulged at the sight of Jon Snow’s body. “Is that—?”

“He is a warg, Your Grace,” Melisandre reminded her, getting to her feet. “He is with his wolf now. But I think we must have him back as a man nonetheless, if Bolton’s letter is true.”

“Bolton’s letter? A _warg_ , in truth, my lady? Can we have anything to do with such a demonic creature?”

“He may not be demonic after all, Your Grace.” Melisandre felt a hysterical sort of laughter building in her chest and throat and clamped down on it lest she scare the queen. “And it may only be temporary.”

“The Lord’s Kiss,” Selyse whispered. “It is—a true thing? You can do it? You would use it on him?”

 _This rabid nonbeliever, this warg demon with a chance to be born again_. She smiled. _Yes, I will use it on him._

“He has control,” she explained out loud, “and control is what is needed here. You must help me, my queen.”

“Yes, I—how?”

“He must be born again. He must be woken from—from stone.” Even as she spoke the words she could not quite believe that they were true, but here she stood, preparing to resurrect a man based on dreams and a burning that now roiled through her entire body. “The Lord will not be with me in such strength for long. I need you, Your Grace. Find loyal men and gather them together. Make a pyre. We’ll need to burn the dead before they can rise. And before that I will need you and the fruit of your royal womb. We need...kingsblood.”

Selyse turned bone white. Melisandre glanced back down at Snow’s body, allowing Selyse to internalize the words.

“Bolton’s letter was...of Stannis,” Selyse whispered eventually. Even without looking at her, Melisandre could hear the tears in her voice.

“Yes. It may be a lie.”

“And if it is not?”

“Then Stannis Baratheon is dead.” Selyse choked on a sob; Melisandre felt the next words stick against the back of her own throat before continuing. “And dead or not, we will need kingsblood to raise fighters in R’hllor’s army. I...have dreamed of Jon Snow, many a time. I did not know why, not until now. He is a man who cannot die, not while he has a wolf. And I think I must bring him back.”

“Stannis is…”

“A man, whatever else he is.” Bitterness, fear, and shame crowded Melisandre’s mouth. “He may be true, he may yet live. Or I may be just a sinful mortal, wrong more than I am right. We must try it nonetheless. Winter has come, and all of us whose hearts are fire must be prepared to give everything to fight the Great Other.”

“The more precious a thing is…” Selyse’s voice wobbled “...the better the sacrifice.”

“Yes. The Lord has taught you well.” Melisandre felt her eyes soften in spite of herself. “There is no kingdom to hold on to anymore, Selyse, no need for heirs. Only R’hllor. Only the world and those we must offer to keep it.”

“I…”

The silence that fell was long, straining Melisandre’s tightened nerves and the fire tingling on her lips.

“Go, Selyse. Go and find men to build the pyre. If nothing else, we will need to burn the dead so that the Great Other does not turn them against us. Get them and bring them back here, quickly.” In a lower voice she added, “Bring Shireen.”

Selyse turned and stumbled away, quickly lost in the dark and the falling snow. Melisandre bent until she was even with Jon Snow’s body once more.

 _I should have stopped him_ , she thought of the wolf, probably now in the woods beyond the Wall. _I must find him again_.

_If Azor Ahai—_

_No_ , she interrupted herself. There was no good in thinking now, only doing. She pressed a kiss, the lightest glancing brush of lips, to Jon Snow’s neck, letting the warmth from her body pass into his veins. A puff of air emerged from his unmoving lips, a slow bit of steam—of life—channeled through him and back to the world.

_It will work._

Decided, she sank to her knees in the snow and waited for Selyse to return so their work could, finally, begin in earnest.


End file.
